Lead author Honorary Associate Professor Charley Lineweaver from ANU said he set out wanting to understand where all the objects in the universe came from.
"When the universe began 13.8 billion years ago in a hot big bang, there were no objects like protons, atoms, people, planets, stars or galaxies. Now the universe is full of such objects," he said.
"The relatively simple answer to where they came from is that, as the universe cooled, all of these objects condensed out of a hot background."
To show this process in the simplest possible way, the researchers made two plots. The first shows temperature and density of the universe as it expanded and cooled. The second plots the mass and size of all objects in the universe.
The result is the most comprehensive chart ever created of all the objects in the universe. The study is published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Physics.
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